“Go right—now!” He instructed the horse, and with his gloved hand, he fastened onto the wooden shaft of the pike just behind its metal tip. The force of the horse’s sharp turn ripped the pike from the lasher’s grasp, leaving him standing defenseless on the open plain. Thaniel turned to charge.
The lasher saw that his fate was sealed but was apparently determined to take his enemy down with him. Extending his clawed hands wide, with a roar, he rushed the horse and rider.
They came together in a horrific, shuddering collision. Aram lost his grip on his sword and was nearly thrown over Thaniel’s head by the sudden loss of forward momentum. Like a rabid wolf, the lasher tried to sink his long, sharp teeth into the horse’s shoulder, ripping and tearing at the metal armor even as blackish blood spouted from his mouth. Thaniel strained to push his opponent backward, trying to force the spikes in his chest plate through the lasher’s armor and into flesh. For a long moment there seemed to be no sound in the world but the groaning of the two great beasts.
Momentarily stunned, and nearly unseated, Aram drew several deep breaths and then finally righted himself and pulled a dagger from his belt. Leaning forward along Thaniel’s shoulder, he drew his arm back and plunged the dagger deep into the flat black well of the lasher’s eye. The lasher howled in agony and let go of the horse, slipping to the side, grabbing at the offending dagger with one hand and the rider with the other.
The loss of tension caused Thaniel to surge forward abruptly, stumbling, and Aram was thrown from his back. As he crashed to the ground, face first, his helmet rang against the steel of his dropped sword. Instinctively, he grasped its hilt and rolled over to find the lasher almost on top of him.
He brought the tip of the sword up but the lasher grabbed the blade and tried to yank it from Aram’s grasp. Fortunately, the lasher’s claws were slick with blood and he struggled to grip the steel. For a moment there was a silent tug of war that Aram realized he could not help but lose against the superior strength of the lasher.
Then, like the descending mass of a black thundercloud, he saw Thaniel appear behind his enemy and he released the hilt of the sword and rolled away just as the great horse rode the lasher down from behind. The creature gave out a peculiar grunt as the sword pierced his body and he crumbled slowly forward, impaled upon the blade by the raw force of Thaniel’s size and power.
As the lasher collapsed, Aram got to his feet, gasping for breath, and glanced around the battlefield. They were nearly alone upon the plain. Manon’s army was running to the rear, toward the wagons, pursued by the ragged, shouting line of the men of Derosa. The two remaining lashers were farther to the rear, atop the wagon with the metal-tipped cone, working furiously.
With Thaniel’s help, Aram heaved the lasher over and pulled his sword from the body. Then he remounted the horse and they turned to overtake the remnants of the army. Quickly, they surpassed the men of Derosa and caught the fleeing soldiers but Aram decided to ignore them and go on toward the rear and take out the remaining lashers, if possible.
They surged far ahead of the retreating soldiers as Thaniel drove westward across the plain. Topping a small rise above a stream they saw, a hundred yards distant, the two lashers standing on the ground by the wagon. They were bathed in a pale green glow. The unearthly light emanated from the figure of a man standing on the bed of the wagon in front of the cone, which now had a dark opening in its angled sides.
The figure standing on the wagon bed was tall and thin, clothed in full- length silver robes, entirely wreathed in the strange luminescence. Even in the glare of the midday sun, the figure glowed, emitting waves of the evil greenish light. His forehead was high, and his large head was bare and bald.
He looked straight at Thaniel and Aram, watching as they approached with a slight smile on his face, seeming to welcome their appearance. Commander or king, whoever he was, he was unarmed.
Thaniel turned toward the strange figure and Aram reached for his remaining spear. If this were the commander of Manon’s army, he would not live to command much longer. But at that moment, Florm’s voice boomed down out of the hills and crashed into Aram’s mind.
“Thaniel! Aram! Turn away—turn away! It is a fellring of Manon. It will destroy you. Turn away—quickly! Run.”
The panic in Florm’s voice was unmistakable and irresistible. Thaniel spun away from the wagon so quickly that Aram was again nearly unseated. He grabbed desperately at the horn of the saddle and leaned low against the horse’s neck, trying to regain his balance.
As they tore away from the eerie figure standing atop the wagon, they again topped the small rise in the ground, beyond which was the stream they’d passed over moments before. Thaniel thundered across the lip of the rise and down toward the stream with Aram hunched over his shoulders just as a small, but mysterious and frightening sound, like the single tolling of a heavy bell in a distant, deep, and dark place occurred behind them.
Time stopped.
The sun dimmed.
A soul-wrenching wave of pain passed through Aram’s bone and sinew.
In one terrible instant, it seemed as if he was torn from his body and thrown out into the vast darkness beyond the world. The sun had gone out. Before him, he saw the circle of the world as it hung among the sweeping fields of stars against the black curtain of the universe. Nothing moved anywhere. Across the surface of the earth, everything was still. The mightiest rivers halted in their courses and raindrops hung suspended in space.
Life had ceased.
Time had stopped.
All was still as death.
And then, fitfully, painfully, time started again.
Like a guttering candle, the sun flickered back into existence.
As if detached from the event and watching it happen as slowly and as hesitantly as the snowflake drifts to earth, Aram saw Thaniel stumble and go to his knees. Inside his own head, thunder rolled against the bone of his skull and pain and nausea whipsawed through his body unchecked.
Thaniel slid to a stop by the stream and Aram rolled slowly earthward from the back of the horse. The impact with the ground seemed to occur at a great distance from him and added nothing to the intense pain. Darkness rose up out of the earth in a venomous cloud and enveloped him. He desperately needed to vomit and tried to remove his helmet but found that he could not raise his arms. As his head rolled to the side, his visor popped up and he saw, inside an ever-constricting cone of darkness, Thaniel’s great head drop forward.
As Aram watched, the horse’s large, lustrous eyes dulled over and rivulets of red formed in the great nostrils, pooled, and dripped onto the grass. Aram tried to speak but he could not find his voice; it was lost somewhere in the fog of his mind, and then the sun winked out again and he went into darkness.
XVII
“Thaniel, Thaniel, my son, my son.” From far away, Aram heard Florm’s desperate cries and through the fog of pain and nausea inside his head, he heard the thrumming of thunder sweeping along the ground, growing ever louder.
He opened his eyes but could see nothing. The world was shrouded in darkness with only one tiny, hazy point of light directly in front of his eyes. Slowly, he became aware of the fact that he was lying on his back. Even more slowly, memory returned.
He remembered then, vaguely, that he and Thaniel had been injured by a terrible detonation. He recalled the immense struggles of the battle and, at the last, the tall ominous figure of a man, wreathed in evil green light, smiling a venomous smile.
The tiny point of light before his eyes grew in intensity until he could no longer bear it and he turned his face away. Something large and black was to his left. Out of it came the sounds of torment.
Thaniel.
“Thaniel, can you hear me?” His voice sounded dry and cracked.
“I hear you, Aram.” Thaniel’s reply was faint and there was agony in its delivery.
“Are you hurt badly?” Aram asked.
“Yes.”
The thunder grew loude
r and, as Aram’s vision cleared, he rolled his head the other way and saw the approach of Florm and Jared. Florm was obviously in panic as he slid to a stop and dropped his head near that of his son.
“Thaniel, my son, speak to me. How badly are you injured?”
Thaniel could not raise his head but he blinked his eyes.
“I am hurt, father. I do not know to what extent.”
Aram rolled onto his belly and pushed himself, trembling, onto his hands and knees. As he did so, his visor clanged shut. He did not have the strength to remove his helmet so he left it on and examined his friend through the slit in the visor. Thaniel was still bleeding from his nostrils, the blood dripping into an increasing pool in the grass. But his eyes were open and though dulled by pain, had regained some of their depth.
Florm rubbed his head gently against that of his son.
“What can I do for you, my son?”
Thaniel heaved a great, shuddering sigh. Clots of blood were ejected from his mouth and nostrils. He breathed in several quick, shallow breaths.
“What was that—the thing that attacked us?” he asked.
“It was Manon.”
Aram looked sharply at Florm, the quick movement of his head causing his ears to ring. “That was Manon?”
“It was a fellring—a projection of himself. He no doubt intended for it to kill you, Aram. But we have no time for this discussion, now.” He pushed gently against his son, shoulder to shoulder. “Can you walk, my son? We need to leave this place.”
“I need water, father. I am so thirsty.”
Using Jared for support, Aram got shakily to his feet. “There’s a stream just over there—I’ll bring some water in my helmet,” he said.
“No.” Thaniel stopped him, and his voice was a bit stronger. “I can walk, Aram. Lord Florm is right. We need to leave this place. There may still be some danger to us here and neither of us has much fight left in us.”
Aram glanced around the plain. They had dropped down out of sight of the wagon where the deadly apparition had appeared but, in his field of vision, there were no soldiers or lashers. The army had gone, probably still fleeing into the west. Since the fighting had occurred farther east, there were no bodies about, either.
“I see nothing to threaten us, Thaniel. There is no reason to rush. We should be certain that you are well enough to move. I’ll bring water.” And he turned toward the stream.
But Thaniel lifted his head and blew out a breath, flecked with blood. “Thank you, lord Aram, but I wish to leave this place. I can walk, though I cannot bear you, and you do not look so well yourself. Jared will bear you.”
Aram leaned unsteadily against Jared’s brown shoulder and nodded his head weakly. “You are right, my friend—if you are able, we should go.”
Florm came around and, with his head, helped Aram get astride Jared. “Can you sit, Aram?”
Aram nodded. “I can sit, my lord.”
“Then I shall help steady Thaniel as we go.”
Florm faced his son and lowered his head until they touched. Pushing against his father, using his strength, Thaniel was able to get off his knees and put his feet firmly beneath his body. For a moment, he stood trembling and breathing erratically. Then he glanced toward the small stream.
“I need water,” he said.
With Thaniel leaning much of his weight against Florm and Aram on Jared’s strong back they went haltingly down to the tiny rivulet. Thaniel put his nose in the water and drank deeply. Aram thought that the water looked very inviting but he was afraid that if he left Jared’s back he would never get back up so he deferred getting a drink until later.
As Thaniel drank, Aram glanced to the east, toward Derosa. From the vantage of Jared’s back, he could see over the rise onto the plain beyond. Standing on that plain, a quarter-mile or so distant, were the men of Derosa, watching the horses and the rider that had saved them. They seemed hesitant to come any nearer and Aram was glad of this. In his current condition he did not want to see anyone but the horses.
Just beyond the ragged line of the Derosans was the main field of battle. Scattered across it, from north to south, were dozens, perhaps hundreds of bodies. Here and there, Aram could see the larger mass of one of the lashers he and Thaniel had killed.
Swiveling his head and shoulders, he looked to the west and was stunned by what he saw there. Where the wagon with the cone had stood there was a blackened crater in the plain, surrounded by a spreading ring of fire, slowly licking at the dry grass. Of the wagons, the men, and the lashers that had been near the fellring, nothing remained but bits and pieces of charred wood, flesh, and bone.
Beyond the ring of the worst devastation there were, here and there, signs of movement in the grass. Horribly wounded soldiers of Manon cried in agony and thrashed about as their pitiable lives ended in anguish. The main body of the army, including the wagons that were still serviceable, was just barely visible in the distance, fleeing across the plain to the west. The battle was over.
When Thaniel had drunk his fill, they eased to the top of the rise and turned north toward the hills. Aram pushed his visor up and as they went, he turned his head and looked at the Derosans, who had grouped up and come a bit closer.
Aram still did not want to talk to anyone and he was sure he could not be recognized in the dark depths of the helmet through the narrow opening provided by the open visor. He looked up and down the line of men for Findaen. Finally he saw him, standing with another man, who was tall, clad in robes, and gray-haired, just a bit in front of the main line. And there was someone else.
Beside the tall man with the gray hair there was a woman.
Aram could not help himself; he stared at her.
Even across that sizeable distance, he could see clearly that she was beautiful. Long dark hair framed an alabaster face. The distance was too great for him to see the color of her eyes, but they were large. She was of medium height and slender, and she carried a small sword and shield.
Finally, Aram turned his face away and the four of them went steadily across the plain and into the trees that he and Thaniel had exploded from an hour before. He turned for one last look at the woman before the trees obscured their view of the plain.
All that afternoon, they went slowly on to the north, up the draw with the stream. Thaniel stopped often to drink and sometimes just to lower his head and breathe deeply for a time. Aram got off his mount once or twice to drink but the effort and the cold liquid, though necessary, often made him nauseous.
It finally occurred to him, in the midst of his illness that he ought to remove his helmet. He was surprised to find that the interior sides of it were smeared with his blood. The detonation of the fellring had caused him to bleed from his ears and, when he put a finger inside his right ear, it came away damp and red. But he breathed better with the helmet gone and the cool autumn breeze felt good on his face.
Toward evening, they found that they’d progressed no further up the draw than the site of their camp the previous night, so they stopped. Thaniel was able to go no further anyway. Aram was deeply concerned for the welfare of the big horse but he was in no condition to do anything but collapse onto the grass, so he left the care of Thaniel to Florm and Jared.
Jared checked with Aram to see if he needed anything but Aram just wanted to lie as still as possible, so the big brown horse went over to help Florm keep the wobbling Thaniel upright throughout the night. It was the belief of both of them that if Thaniel went down again, he would never rise. As he tried to sleep, unsuccessfully, Aram heard the labored breathing of his friend rise and fall throughout the night in great, painful waves.
The night grew cold with threat of frost or maybe even a freeze and it took a toll on Aram’s body. As ill as he was he could do nothing to prevent its assault on him. He was too weak to build a fire and this skill was beyond either of his well companions. Curiously, though, the chill air cleared his brain somewhat and he was able to think more clearly even as his body suffer
ed.
He realized that he and Thaniel had come very close to death. He did not feel now that he was going to die but Thaniel’s future was obviously still very much in doubt. The horse’s mind was untethered because of the pain and Aram was occasionally subjected to an intrusion into Thaniel’s thoughts. They were wild and confused and overlaid with fear. Aram was pained that he had brought the great brave horse to this terrible pass.
But Florm and Jared succeeded in keeping Thaniel on his feet though the night and, when dawn broke, the injured horse went to the spring on his own volition stumbling on trembling legs to drink deeply from the cold, clear water. After sitting in the warming rays of the rising sun until he felt able to move, Aram followed suit. It appeared that they were both on the mend.
This day, however, proved to be worse than the previous. By midday, Thaniel’s wounds, which were not visible to the eye, had taken him fully. They tried to make progress up the long ridge toward the top but Thaniel could move no more than a few yards at a time before coming dangerously close to collapse.
Aram, who sat on Jared the whole time, found that he was improving as the day wore on, even as Thaniel seemed to fail. Finally he thought clearly enough to realize that Thaniel did not need to carry the added burden of his armor, so during one of the frequent stops, he untied the straps and loosed all the catches and removed the armor from the horse.
He also took off his own armor and tied all of it into two great bundles which he then fastened on Jared, using the saddle as a pack frame. Then he went over and checked Thaniel all over but could find no exterior injury to the horse. Still, Thaniel worsened as the day drew on. And he shivered almost uncontrollably.
That night when they stopped, still far from the top of the main ridge above the river, Aram gathered wood and started a fire. Once again, Florm and Jared stood on either side of Thaniel, straining to keep him erect throughout the night. Aram slept fitfully, rousing every so often to refurbish the fire so that both he and Thaniel could benefit from the heat.
Kelven's Riddle: The Mountain at the Middle of the World Page 26
